Spreading Medicine's Miracles: They Bring Smiles To Kids Around The World

October 02, 2007|By Lisa Finneran, lfinneran@dailypress.com 247-7470

Three nurses, one doctor and an administrator from Riverside Regional Medical Center.

Four countries.

One World Journey.

Next month, Ray and Carol Schmidt, Kathy Majette, Sharon Neece and Dr. Stephen Bolduc will pay their way and take their vacation time to travel overseas as volunteers with Operation Smile. They are among 1,500 volunteers who will simultaneously travel to 25 countries on 40 medical missions as part of Operation Smile's World Journey of Smiles.

From Nov. 7-16, Operation Smile volunteers expect to see at least 10,000 children around the world and perform 5,000 surgeries to fix facial deformities. It's all part of the group's 25th anniversary celebration, which also includes an Oct. 12 dinner party at the Virginia Beach Convention Center.

For the five from Riverside hospital, it's nothing new - all have traveled with Operation Smile in the past. And they all tell a similar story:

"I've gotten so much more from the people we've met than I feel like I've given back," said Carol Schmidt, a nurse in the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit.

She is going to Ethiopia. Her husband Ray, Riverside's director of human resources, is going to Bolivia.

Combined, the couple have seen more than 1,000 children in nine countries.

But for each there is one child who made a lasting impression.

Carol Schmidt still keeps in touch with Julius Kihari, the 12-year-old boy she met in Kenya last year. Julius was badly burned on his neck while cooking in his family's kitchen years before, and scar tissue from the injury kept him from being able to turn his head to the left.

She remembers noticing him in the crowd of hundreds of children and parents who came to see the Operation Smile doctors in the hope they would be selected to have their facial deformities surgically repaired.

"I just happened to look outside and I fell in love," she said, adding he received surgery to repair the scars on his neck and now is able to turn his head fully.

Typically between 300 and 500 children attend each Operation Smile medical mission, spokeswoman Lisa Jones said. Only about 100 to 150 are selected for surgery.

When Ray Schmidt was in Brazil last year he was the one who read out the names of the children who had been selected for surgery.

"It just rips your heart out," he said. "To see the moms cry out, because the names are read alphabetically and they knew their child wasn't going to get surgery. It's depressing."

But no one goes away empty-handed. As part of the screening process, each child is seen by doctors and speech therapists.

"For many of these kids, it's the only time they've had any medical attention," said Majette, who was named Operation Smile's volunteer of the year for 2006.

Bolduc, a pediatrician at Riverside, is one of the doctors who will provide medical attention to children in November. On missions he helps assess whether children are good candidates for surgery. "I don't make the final decision, the surgical team does that," Bolduc said. "It's difficult."

Majette said she still remembers a girl she met on a trip to Honduras several years ago, who was selected for surgery to repair a cleft lip and palate. A few years later, Majette was back in Honduras and the girl was back at Operation Smile hoping to be selected for further surgery on her smile.

"She wasn't chosen for surgery, but she did get to see the dentist," she said.

For Neece, a neonatal intensive care nurse at Riverside, there was one mother who stands out from her 12 Operation Smile missions.

She was in the Philippines in 2001, and there was a woman in the hospital who had saved up all the money she got in a year to take her child to Manila for surgery. "Turns out it was $6," Neece said. "She was sobbing over $6."

The doctors and nurses took up a collection and were able to give the mother about $100.

After those kinds of experiences, Neece said, she has a hard time coming back to her comfortable life at home.

"You end up going through withdrawal," she explained. "After you come back from a mission, it takes a little while to get back to normal."

OPERATION SMILE CELEBRATES 25 YEARS OF FIXING SMILES

* Founded: In Norfolk in 1982 by Dr. William P. Magee, a plastic surgeon, and his wife, Kathleen, a nurse and clinical social worker.